A note on dealing with spammers
 

I know, I know: we all feel that urge from time to time when an obvious spammer posts. I've been guilty of it myself, till Urban pointed out the futility of it and the extra work it entails for those who have to clean the forum up. We want to slag the spammer off, throw casual insults their way or engage in some sort of conversation with them. But if you do that, one of three things will happen.

1. You will run the risk of turning a spammer into a troll when they realise they can get attention here

2. Your post(s), along with any they respond with, will have to be deleted as well as the original one, making more work for our overtaxed mods

or

3. Your post(s) will not be deleted, while theirs are, leaving you either looking like you're talking to yourself or, worse, a poster above you in the thread who has nothing to do with your comment.

Of course, this can be turned on its head, as sometimes an obvious spam thread catches the imagination and becomes, through other members, more of a joke thread or just veers wildly away from the OP, or just mocks it. But generally speaking, these are instigated by mods, and if they do that then you know it's probably ok to post in it. But best not to try that yourself as you may just end up encouraging a potential troll.

So, try to restrain your natural impulses and
http://www.utourdoc.com/uploads/2/9/...79934_orig.gif

This has been a presentation by Bloody Obvious Threads, a subsidiary of Trollheart Enterprises. All rights reserved MMXV

When did you get modded?^

You don't have to be a mod to make a thread that helps out. It's in response to this exact thing happening very recently. Rather than go telling the member themselves I thought a reminder/public service announcement would be a good idea.

Better advice (imo) could simply be :

Don't respond to spam, but feel free to report it if you want to help out.

I heard from real mods that's not such a good idea. If there are 30 members online and only one mod and a bunch of members send out a PM to a single mod, then his or her box can get filled up pretty quick -- all with the same message. Plus, no one likes to be told over and over about the same thing especially when its obvious.

If you notice it's the same topic in every forum/sub-forum about another music site, or see they made string of replies when you searched for new posts, it's probably spammer. If you are unsure if it's a spammer or not, check out the stats on that member's profile page, if they joined that day and have a handful of one word/sentence replies then they could possibly be spammers. Spammers have the same MO, it's pretty obvious what they are doing, the best thing is to ignore them.

If someone has put up a spam message inside an existing thread, feel free to report it because it's not as easy to find those. If there's 15 quick posts by the user in the New Posts section then it's pretty easy to spot so unless the spam post/thread has been up for a few hours, a mod will get to it. If a spammer posts a new thread saying something along the lines of "go check out my band" don't report it unless it has been up for 12 hours.

Personally I'd prefer if people didn't respond to spammers, even if it is something as simple as "no" but I can't stop people and I'm not going to infract people for such a trivial offense.

One should use the report function rather than PMs.

I remember Urban posted that people shouldn't report spam once back in the day, but I never minded it. I'm generally all for members helping out.

As Pete said, it's helpful to report spam if it's somewhere not immediately noticeable, like in an existing thread, but if it's its own thread there's no need to report it since it's very noticeable to any mod.

Good point, I forgot to add that in there, that you should use the report function rather than PMs.

i feel the tone of this thread serves to otherize spammers, speaking of them as if they are a separate sub-human species. this kind of attitude is why **** like rwanda happens.

#stopspammershaming

#spambotsarepeopletoo

That's very unfair to sub-humans... Also, is "otherize" a word?

#Notheyrenot

#everybodysamoderatornow. :|

"Everybody Sam Oderator Now"

Can't we just taze/spray 'em and move on?

I've been saying that for years.

otherize - Wiktionary


that's pretty hateful man

I won't lie...I'd rather be tased as opposed to sprayed. Just a personal preference. And here's why: the taser is going to hurt more upfront but once you get through the burst because they stopped pulling the trigger, no more pain. I wear contacts and getting sprayed with contacts SUCKS. Because it gets up your nose, in your mouth, on your contacts, everything.

What's the effective date or better yet the date it'd actually be readily available?

I can just see Batty queuing to get one of these. Or probably breaking in and stealing one out of the showroom. The new BatMobile? ;)

stinky bastard.

dunno, you're the one who works for the govt. pretty sure the military already has em.

Directed-energy weapon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yup, militarily available at this point and I think the national guard has them for riots and such. My dad makes those and drones and other ****.

your dad sounds cool

They ain't made it to me yet!

I had to get it from somewhere.

So he has hipster facial hair and panhandles for drug money as well?

Edit: You know, it just occurred to me. You could do an outreach thing for hobos where you find some that can play instruments and form some kind of panhandling group to raise money for crack and 40 ounces.

Nah he grew up in the 80s so he has spandex instead of facial hair.

Reposting this edit in case you missed it...

Edit: You know, it just occurred to me. You could do an outreach thing for hobos where you find some that can play instruments and form some kind of panhandling group to raise money for crack and 40 ounces.

I saw it when I quoted your post. Reasonable idea, but where would the instruments come from?

Side note: I also work at a mortgage company for drug money, maybe we can get hobos in on that too?

I'd say your own instruments -- assuming you have enough to go around -- but there'd be the issue of them stealing them and selling them for crack and 40 ounces. It would probably undermine the atmosphere of the project to somehow secure them to lamp posts or have friends standing by with tazers, but I can't think of anyway to deal with the problem in a way that made it look like you didn't trust any farther than you could throw them.

Perhaps "borrowing" instruments from whatever music program you have at your college?

And I imagine having hobos work at a mortgage company might give them Nam-style flashbacks.

Just break up a chair, hand four of them a leg each for percussion, one can use the seat as a kind of tambourine maybe and then the back can be like a washboard. Almost a full band, and who cares if the instruments go missing?

Hey: should I market this idea? ;)

Spambots
 

What sort of filters does MusicBanter use to prevent Spambots from gaining membership?

Today, as usual, I saw lots of presumably Spambot members that had been banned. The number of disabled Spambot accounts online outnumbered actual human members by almost 3 to 1.

So I am wondering if moderators are having to disable the Spambot accounts, or if it is an automated system.

Does the forum not only challenge new joining members with CAPTCHA but also with verification questions to prevent Spambots from even becoming new members?

My plan to turn Spambots into weapons of warfare to invade and conquer the servers of rival music forums would solve this problem. These SAMbots (Surface-to-Asshole-Missiles) would become valued members of the site.

Maybe that already happened, because it looks to me like Muzicforums is GONE! :eek:

I remember fondly when there was a rivalry between Muzicforums and Musicbanter. One time, one of their mods apparently went berserk and a bunch of their members left, with some showing up here. Now Muzicforums doesn't even appear to exist. Perhaps the SAMbots did them in.

Not likely. The SAMbots' purpose is to invade another forum's server and turn them into a vassal state whose purpose is to pay monetary tribute to Music Banter. Destroying their forum would be counter-productive.

My plan is further discussed here...

http://www.musicbanter.com/games-lis...ml#post1635410

And here...

http://www.musicbanter.com/games-lis...ml#post1635422